International Nutrition Supply Chain Specialist Consultant at UNICEF

Job No: 555842
Contract type: Consultant
Level: Consultancy
Duration: 11.5 months
Categories: Supply Management

Background

• Nigeria is among a set of countries with disproportionate levels of people living in hunger and suffering from food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms. Unfortunately, stunting has declined very slowly over the last 20 years, for instance, from 42 to 37 percent in children under five. 
• Therefore, there remains about 14 million children in Nigeria suffering from stunting today.  In addition, 68 percent of children 6-59 months have some degree of anemia. Although hunger and malnutrition are widespread across the country, the Northern region faces a higher burden due to conflict and insecurity, climate change, reduced agricultural productivity, and low literacy levels.  
• To reverse the hunger and malnutrition, Nigeria has endorsed a range of policies and plans including but not limited to the National Policy on Food and Nutrition (2016). 
• Towards this vision, UNICEF provides technical and financial support to Government and partners. Taken together, UNICEF has planned to contribute almost $200M USD in the Country Program 2018 to 2022, about half of which is planned to support the nutrition supplies, mostly, within the humanitarian context.
• As Sector Lead for Nutrition, UNICEF is responsible for procurement of all therapeutic products (including Ready to Use Therapeutic Food, Therapeutic Milks, antibiotics, etc.). 
• Additionally, for prevention, UNICEF also procures micronutrient powders (MNPs) and receives contribution in kind of Vitamin A Supplements. 
• Several challenges have emerged in managing the overall supply chain, which puts at risk UNICEF’s mandate to deliver on its promise to prevent malnutrition and save children’s lives. 
• The challenges have included, but are not limited to, poor plan development and forecasting, delays in procurement due to internal and external factors, warehousing and in-country distribution of commodities, expired inventory, fraud, and misuse.

Job Description
How can you make a difference? 

• To enable UNICEF to diagnose key issues and support the Nutrition and Supply Sections to plan and manage its supply chain in a seamless manner, UNICEF Nigeria is looking to contract a Supply Chain Consultant to identify risks, barriers and bottle necks, consultatively develop recommendations, and plan implementation, and mentor the team to take on this work long-term.
• To provide Technical Assistance to diagnose and resolve Nutrition supply chain bottlenecks, with improvements to supply chain forecasting, financing, order placement, shipment tracking, and invoice management of nutrition commodities that are procured by UNICEF Nigeria.
• Under the direct supervision of the Chief of Supply and Logistics, Abuja, and in close consultation with the Logistics Specialist and Nutrition Manager, the consultant will:
  • Diagnose and resolve Nutrition supply chain bottlenecks, implementing improvements to supply chain forecasting, financing, order management, shipment tracking, and invoice management of nutrition commodities that are procured by UNICEF Nigeria.
  • Be the temporary focal point for upstream and downstream visibility to Nutrition Supplies in UNICEF Nigeria.
  • Provide proactive transparency of nutrition commodities to enable decision-makers to ensure that there are no breaks in the pipeline for products procured by UNICEF on behalf of the government, implementing partners, or UNICEF Nigeria Country Office.
  • Prepare a handover plan to ensure that improvements are taken forward by the Nutrition and Supply teams.

Requirements
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have:

• Minimum of Undergraduate Degree education is required, preferably supplemented by technical, advanced degree, or certification courses related to supply chain management.
• A minimum of 8 years of relevant experience in supply chain operations in the private sector, nutrition, or global health environment.
• Experience in logistics operations, inventory management, or distribution management
• Proven experience with Excel, ability to create calculations, look-up tables, and pivot tables
• Ability to organize and manage information
• Ability to work in a multi-cultural environment
• Fluency in written and spoken in English
• Proficiency in MS Excel, PowerPoint, Word
• Understanding of development and humanitarian work is an advantage.
• Experience working in Nigeria health systems is an advantage.

Language Requirements: 

• Fluency in English is required.

For every Child, you demonstrate:

• UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS). 
• To view our competency framework, please visit here.